I was already pretty sure from his own career that the president-elect was unclear on the definition of "illegally," but this pretty much closes the case on that. In any event, he's being inaugurated in less than a month and here he is with the old gubba-gubba about a campaign talking-point that was past its sell-by date some time at the end of August.

At six o'clock in the damn morning.

So, on with the show. It seems that Pops let Junior pick the new Secretary of the Interior, and Junior persuaded him to go with the guy who likes to kill things as much as Junior does. Tiger Beat On The Potomacwith the details.

The lines between the Trump administration and Trump Inc. are already becoming blurred. Donald Trump, the president elect's eldest son, was involved with the interview process for Interior secretary, according to sources familiar with the discussions. He sat in on interviews, and made calls to candidates, according to sources familiar with the process. Don Jr. is known as an avid outdoorsman, which is why he might have an interest in the next Interior secretary.

Jesus save us, they really are the Clampetts. Also, as regards to the president-elect and his family business, there are no goddamn lines! Thank you.

It's significant that Don Jr. took a hands-on role in hiring a Cabinet secretary. Either Trump's boys -- Don and Eric -- are running the Trump Organization, or they're helping advise their father, the next president of the United States. Doing both is exactly what Republicans and Democrats alike are worried about. If he's running the company, why is he helping his father assemble his Cabinet? The Trump transition team didn't reply when asked why he's meeting with prospective appointees when he's taking over his father's business.

All of this should tell you something, but it probably won't.

But the really big noise out of Camp Runamuck on Friday was about this David Friedman guy, whom the president-elect intends to make our country's ambassador to Israel. In the truly bipartisan tradition, Friedman is rich and influential enough to be an ambassador. He also is something of a fanatic. The folks at Ha'aretzare not amused, as NPR relays.

According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Friedman is an Orthodox Jew who maintains a part-time residence in Israel. He is a regular columnist for the Israeli news website Arutz Sheva, which is identified with the settler movement. In his columns, Friedman has called the two-state solution an "illusion," and compared liberal American Jews to "kapos," Jews who aided Nazis during the Holocaust. In a statement from the Trump transition office announcing his nomination, Friedman indicated he is prepared to upend decades of U.S. policy regarding the location of the U.S. embassy, which is now in Tel Aviv: "I intend to work tirelessly to strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region, and look forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem." The U.S. position has long been that the legal status of Jerusalem is yet to be determined. A law passed by Congress in 1995 requires the U.S. to move its embassy to Jerusalem but allows presidents to waive that requirement, which all have done. During his campaign, Trump pledged to move the embassy.

So he's going to work to advance the cause of peace just as soon as the United States does the one thing guaranteed to set off a staggering outburst of violence throughout the entire region? Gotcha.

He's also hip-deep in the settlement movement and believes that there is no legal barrier to Israel's simply annexing the West Bank. The New York Times brings us an anecdote about Friedman's appearance at a private forum. It is not an encouraging one.

Mr. Friedman has made clear his disdain for those American Jews — especially those connected to J Street — who support a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians. Writing in June on the website of Arutz Sheva, an Israeli media organization, Mr. Friedman compared J Street supporters to "kapos," the Jews who cooperated with the Nazis during the Holocaust. "The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty," he wrote. "But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel's destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas — it's hard to imagine anyone worse." At a private session this month at the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of Israeli and American foreign policy figures, Mr. Friedman declined to disavow the comments and even intensified the sentiment. Questioned by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, Mr. Friedman was asked if he would meet with various groups, including J Street. Mr. Friedman said he would probably meet with individuals but not with the group, according to several people who attended. Mr. Goldberg then raised the kapos comparison and asked if he stood by it. Mr. Friedman did not back away. "They're not Jewish, and they're not pro-Israel," he said, according to the people in the room.

Does one imply the other? If you believe that it does, then your attitude toward events in that region is well-nigh intractable. The settlement movement is both politically stupid and politically dangerous. (Some guy in Philadelphia decides that a 5,000-year-old real estate deal with Jehovah entitles him to a stranger's distant olive grove? Using families as bargaining chips and/or human buffer zones? There's undeniable courage there, but it's being employed in a terrible cause.) It's probably the worst thing that Israel has contributed to the cycle of mutual hostility and violence that seems never-ending.

I have a feeling that Friedman has a good idea how he thinks the cycle should end, and that makes me shudder. But he does have the one unrevocable golden ticket to a job with the incoming administration, which The Guardiandug up for our perusal.

Like Trump, Friedman is an admirer of Vladimir Putin, and has portrayed the Russian president as fighting Islamic State in Syria despite little of the Russian war effort being focused on Isis. "Vladimir Putin gets it," Friedman wrote in November last year. "He may be a 'thug,' as he was recently described by Senator [Marco] Rubio, but he knows how to identify a national objective, execute a military plan, and ultimately prevail."

The president-elect has been strangely silent on the butchery currently going on in Syria. I think we might have an inkling of why that is now, and why his Friday morning was spent lamenting Donna Brazile's perfidy regarding Bernie Sanders. And what fresh hell will be upon us by sundown, we can only guess.

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